Mark

He opens his eyes in the
amniotic fluid of his mother.
His fingers open and close
like anemones.
The enthrallment of voices
is clear,
strange sounds.
He hugs the invisible,
in the lucid darkness
of the womb.

Only once will he enter
the channel of his birth,
then new epiphanies
will close that door.
Syllables will proclaim a name,
as if a fog is being lifted.
But where is the heartbeat
of his mother’s soul?
The quiet of her enfolding?

So inscrutable this passage
from twilight into cold.
The cataclysm of air, nakedness
and covering,
exhausted slumber.
Child cast into time.
The beginning of a destiny
foreseen
by greater eyes than ours,
put into our arms.